Many small-business owners, along with salespeople at larger companies, would describe the last decade as just plain dismal from a sales standpoint. Many are bruised and confused about what it really takes these days to achieve sales breakthroughs.
The art of selling may be changing faster now than at any point in the last half century. For one thing, the skyrocketing importance of social media has transformed the selling landscape forever and charted the course for the next decade.
Take it from one of today’s smartest minds in selling, Josiane Feigon, CEO of TeleSmart Communications, in San Francisco. “The next generation of sales has arrived,” she says.
Here’s how you can respond to trends that are transforming the small- business sales landscape:
• Become a research racehorse. Given the glut of Web-based information available, salespeople must come to the table equipped with a depth of information and knowledge about their target customers that proves the salesperson’s interest and attracts the prospect’s attention.
• Know what customers (really) care about. First, know what they don’t care about, like how “great” your service is; how “low” your prices are, and whether they might have been your customer in the past. Loyalty runs thin these days, and old sales platitudes fall flat. According to Feigon, what customers do care about is how smart you are about their business; how you can lower their risk; and how strong of a reputation you’ve built with people they might know.
• Create contagious content. Increase your credibility and build awareness of your products or services by publishing content relevant to your customers. This is easier than ever to do online. Start a blog, or contribute to others in your field. Regularly post comments and participate in Web communities and forums where your customers also participate. Create and distribute trend reports, webinars, articles and similar content and make it available for free and easy download from your Web site. Business.com, for example, has gained valuable exposure and armed its sales force with key information by publishing a variety of white papers and research reports on business-to-business (B2B) selling and the growth of selling via social media.
• Find the real buyers. Especially in the B2B world, more people today are involved in the decision-making process – but fewer of those individuals actually have the power to make a purchase decision. Learn to recognize the decision-makers and bypass others without making them mad. •
Daniel Kehrer can be reached at editor@business.com.
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